Tomorrow will be exactly two weeks since my Summer Crush started on Tom Hardy. Lorella messaged me this morning to say “congratulations”. My Summer Crushes haven’t made it past 10 days in a long time. And considering this beard, that’s an accomplishment.

The beard is for Mad Max. It is gross. But, um, it’s for Mad Max. That’s ... badass. I don’t know how else to say it. You know what else is kind of badass? Ok, no, like totally badass? It’s the way people talk about Tom Hardy. There’s a reason Warner Bros gave him a first look deal. It’s the same reason Shia LaBeouf talks about him with a hard-on. And Gary Oldman too. And Christopher Nolan (you’ll start hearing a lot of this as The Dark Knight Rises moves into heavy publicity). When I asked Guy Pearce about Hardy he was almost evangelical. Some crazy journalist compared him to Marlon Brando in Cannes. And there are many others, not dumb enough to say it out loud, who truly believe that Tom Hardy is one of the few who can have that kind of career. Who you will remember like Nicholson.

All of that is very helpful in making up for the beard.

Word is they leave to start work on Mad Max in Namibia in a couple of weeks. They’ll take a few more weeks after that to acclimate and rehearse and supposedly, finally, after what is it now, two years?, shooting will begin in July. Charlize Theron will be there too. Hardy showed up at the Prometheus premiere last night to support her and also Pearce with whom he worked on Lawless which, really, was the genesis of my Summer Crush to begin with. It’s how he is in the film. He is SO great in the film.

Of course I’m not looking at where he has his hand on his fiancée Charlotte Riley and imagining myself.